


Shut Up and Let Me See Your Jazz Hands

by feverbeats



Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, F/F, F/M, M/M, Non-binary character, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 19:06:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18723106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverbeats/pseuds/feverbeats
Summary: Seven perspectives on gender stuff, mental health stuff, becoming a family again stuff. They are all exactly as bad at it as each other.





	Shut Up and Let Me See Your Jazz Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Is it statistically likely that this many of them would be trans/nb? NOPE. Also note that Allison's power is more like what she can do in the comics (actually changing reality rather than mind control stuff).
> 
> Is this songfic? NO, SONGFIC ISN'T A THING ANYMORE. Is it songfic, though? In the sense that My Chemical Romance exists and my emotions exist and I want you to know about it, YEAH, I GUESS.
> 
> Warnings: body horror, sibling incest (canon and non-canon), suicide, transphobia, self-harm.

**00.02 You're running after something that you'll never kill**

"I know just who you are," Mom always says with utter certainty, when Diego comes to her in tears.

She's the only one who feels that way, although Allison sometimes gives him these funny, wounded looks, like she doesn't know what to do about him. Maybe she thinks he's a traitor or something, for not wanting to be a girl anymore. Diego doesn't talk much, in those days, because his stutter stops him from getting out what he really means before Luther or Allison interrupts him.

He's so angry, every minute.

Most of the time he doesn't even know who he's angry at, so he chooses Luther. Luther 

It's not until years later that he realizes he's actually mad at Dad, but that being mad at Dad is too dangerous. It's not until after Ben dies and there's very little left to lose that Diego lets himself blame Dad for everything.

When he leaves home, he starts building a life for himself. He does it almost aggressively, panic-stricken that he won't be able to get what he needs. He gets on hormones two weeks after he turns eighteen. Six months after that, he saves enough money to go to Mexico and look for his birth mom. He doesn't find her, but his Spanish improves, which might be closer to what he wanted.

When he comes back to Battery City, he moves to a neighborhood where he's more likely to hear Spanish than English. He starts going to church, just to find some kind of community. He still feels like pieces of a person, rather than a whole, but he's starting to grow a beard and his Spanish is better still. When people talk to him, he can talk back. When people talk _shit_ , he can talk back to that, too.

The only one he'd want to call is Klaus, but he can't bear seeing Klaus kill himself. He'd rather seen it on the news than watch it happen, like...

He starts fighting crime about six months after being back in the city. He applies for the police academy with his heart in his mouth. They probably don't want guys like him. He lies on the paperwork and gets in.

He thinks about calling Klaus a lot, but he doesn't have his number. No matter what he does, he's still angry. He just can't get rid of it. He remembers telling Ben that he knew how he felt, with his monster. But even after all Diego's hard work, his monster isn't gone. It wasn't a girl problem or a boy problem, it was a him problem.

He keeps doing things, pulling more pieces of himself together. Surgery. Another job. New friends. Volunteering. He's still angry, and he misses his family so much. He even misses Luther, but he won't set foot back in that house.

When he thinks about Eudora after the fact, he always remembers her as saying the right thing about his body, his stutter, his family. But she didn't. She wasn't perfect. She made him feel like shit without meaning to sometimes. Still, being with her made him feel the most like a person so far.

Diego almost doesn't go to the house for Dad's funeral. If anyone asked, he'd say he wanted to make sure it wasn't a trick. The truth is, he wanted to see Klaus.

"You look good," Klaus tells him, looking him up and down. They're standing in one of the rooms that always feels too big for the things in it. Diego can feel his stutter trying to take back control. He half expects something to burst out of the floor and grab his ankles so he can't leave.

"Sure," he tells Klaus. "Can't say the same for you." Klaus isn't even wearing shoes. God, where has he been this whole time?

Klaus ignores him, leaning forward to run his fingers jover Diego's stubble. " _Wow_. You really do look _good_."

The others are there too, trying to ignore them. Allison look incredibly uncomfortable. Vanya is a fucking snake who wrote all about him in her book. Luther is probably getting ready to say something nasty.

Diego can't bear to think about that, so he peels away from Klaus lets himself into the kitchen. Mom is there, cooking.

"Diego," she says, turning to smile at him. Like he hasn't been gone a day.

"Mom, I am so sorry," he say.

Now he's back, and the only thing he regrets is staying away from Mom for so long. She was the only one who believed in him for a long time, and he abandoned her. Maybe he can make that right now.

"I really missed you," he says into her hair.

"I missed you, too, Diego, dear," she says. She sounds as bright as ever, but he can hear in her voice that she means it. The part of him that still hasn't stopped being angry jolts in his chest. How could Dad believe that Mom was just a robot?

After he talks to Mom, he makes his way back to the living room. Everyone has dispersed, except for Klaus, who is sitting perched on the end of the couch. He looks slightly past Diego, and Diego is reminded, with a shock, that Klaus is probably high.

"Hey there," Klaus says with surprisingly gentleness. "Hi. Allison says she likes your haircut."

Weird. Weird, but it proves what Diego always thought, which was that they'd be better off without Dad. Kinder. That they had the ability to be kind. That might not be true of Luther, but he thinks it's at least true of Allison and Klaus.

"You can tell her I like her pants," Diego says generously, and Klaus nods.

 _I'm not going to leave this family again,_ Diego thinks. Seeing all of them again hard, but under it all is a current of relief. He can't say it, but he's so proud. They're all living their lives, and he thinks even more of them are queer than before, and he misses them.He hates this house, but this family is his home. He has to find a way to make that work.

**00.04 If it looks like I'm laughing, I'm really just asking to leave**

Ben's been dead for a week and the world is spinning. Klaus is flat on his back on a park bench because he can't imagine going home like this. Dad always knows when he's high; it's just that he's not able to stop Klaus. Klaus is too big to just fling into a crypt. That must be so frustrating!

When Klaus high, the edges of everything blur. Time slows down or speeds up, depending what he's on. He loses track of what he's supposed to be worrying about. And when he's high, he isn't seeing Ben torn apart in the middle of a public square on a mission that was going so well up until that point.

Klaus's teeth won't stop chattering. People walking by are staring, but how can he care about that when his best friend is dead? Who's he going to kiss now? Who's going to stand up for him? Who's going to make sure he stays alive? No wingman, so brother, no boyfriend.

He closes his eyes and lets the world spin. "Ben," he whispers.

"Klaus."

Klaus falls fully off the bench, coming into jarring contact with the ground. "Fuck!" he hisses, scrambling to his feet.

Ben is standing behind the bench. He's drenched in his own blood, one arm missing, tentacles hanging out of him. One of the tentacles twitches hungrily, wrapping itself around Ben's chest, which is ragged with wounds.

"Oh," Klaus says in a little sob."Oh, oh, no." He squeezes his eyes shut, fingers scrabbling at the ground. "Oh god, you're a drug-induced hallucination."

"Are you kidding me?" Ben says. "Are you or are you not the Seance?"

"Not this effectively!" Klaus says. He grips the edge of the bench until his fingers hurt. "I wasn't even trying. How are you here? You're not yelling at me." He almost doesn't want to come down, because what if Ben disappears?

"Why would I be yelling?" Ben sounds really tired. Just how he'd sounded for weeks before--before.

"They usually yell," Klaus says. People in his life, ghosts, both. He looks away from Ben and begins to search for his other two pills. He finds them in the dirt and takes them anyway. After that, things get hazy. Ben is bloody and yelling, and then Klaus is gone, leaned up against the bench.

Finally, Allison comes and finds him. He's only down the street from the house, and she knows where he likes to go.

"Hey," she says, sitting on the bench and winding her hand in his hair.

He opens his eyes. Ben is, unbelievably, still there. He's sitting on the grass in front of them, still bloody. Allison is looking right through him him.

"Hey," Klaus says shakily. "Hey, hey. The grass is wet."

Allison tugs his hair Klaus hair, which feels amazing, especially through the haze of drugs. "This is the worst thing. Worse than when Five disappeared."

So they're ranking siblings now? Cool, cool. "Did you see it?" Klaus asks. "I mean, did you _see_ what happened to him?"

Allison hesitates. "Yes," she says. "I saw."

They sit there in silence for a long, long time. Ben rocks on his heels, looking at the sky. He looks so serious, which Klaus guesses anybody would.

When the sky starts getting light, Allison hauls on Klaus's hand and they head back toward the house. Ben is still there, walking just next to him, hands in his pockets.

A decade and a half later, Ben is still walking next to them. He's learned not to be all bloody and armless, so Klaus isn't _really_ sure what he means when he says ghosts can't change. And he's definitely not sixteen anymore.

They're both curled up on the couch, Klaus at one end, Ben on the other. Their feet aren't touching, because Klaus's feet would go through Ben's, and it would be upsetting. They negotiable the space between them by pretending it doesn't exist.

Coming home feels like dying. Klaus thinks they've died--oh, more than one, definitely more than once, at least medically speaking--and this is so close. Walking the halls feels like suffocation. They don't know if it's their power that makes them smell dust everywhere in the house, or see cobwebs. Mom should be keeping it neat, but it feels like it's decaying. Rotting with Dad. They start laughing in fits and they can feel Ben staring at them, horrified. Sometimes Klaus feels like _they're_ the ghost.

"How are we going to get _through_ this week?" Klaus demands. They know how they're going to do it, obviously. Drugs! But it's going to suck. 

"The others are ignoring us," Ben says. "I mean, they're always ignoring me. But they're ignoring you, too."

"Yeah," Klaus says. "That's not news either. And I have so much to tell them about."

"You say that like it's a joke, but you do," Ben says. "Do they know you're homeless? Do they know you're genderqueer? Do they--?"

"Aaah, stop stop stop." Klaus covers their ears. "I can't--Being here is really, really hard. Don't you feel it?"

Ben frowns in concentration. "No," he says. "I don't feel things like that anymore. It's like armor."

"Oh, being dead sounds _great._ " Klaus buries their head in their hands.

Ben makes a disapproving noise. All things considered, he has a lot of nerve judging Klaus for trying to destroy themself.

"Did you see Diego's cute little beard situation?" Klaus asks.

"Hm," Ben says, and Klaus has no idea what that means. Ben is impossible to read. A beautiful enigma who Klaus can't kiss anymore. It's infuriating and depressing.

"Do you think Diego will be our friend?" Klaus asks after a minute of contemplation.

"Your friend, maybe," Ben says. "I'm invisible, remember? Also, he's our brother and we know him and he's a dick."

"Our friend," Klaus repeats, pleased with the idea. "I'm going to go learn about coffee and alcohol and Diego. You come with me."

Ben does, of course.

**00.06 And when the lights all went out, we watched our lives on the screen**

Ben is sixteen and everything is hard. He feels like his limbs weight a thousand pounds. He's sick to his stomach almost every day, and he can feel the thing squirming inside him constantly. All he wants is to get rid of it and go home. But he is home.

Diego says once that he knows how Ben feels, and if that's true, Ben can't imagine how impatient Diego must be to be eighteen and have a cure. But no amount of hormones or surgery will fix how wrong Ben feels in his skin. Unless they could.

He makes himself brave enough to go into Dad's office one day. Klaus whispers encourgement in his ear before he goes in, then disappears down the hall. Dad won't listen to anything Ben has to say if he brings Klaus.

"Um," he says. Good start.

Dad doesn't look up.

"Dad," Ben says.

"What is it, Number Six?" Dad doesn't even stop writing to say it.

Ben clears his throat and feels the thing inside writhe. "I was wondering," he says. "I thought maybe you could do some kind of surgery on my monster."

"Don't call it that, Number Six." Dad says exasperated. He puts his pen aside. "It's an interdimensional being, I've told you that. Is something wrong with it?"

"Well, yeah," Ben says. He presses his palms together in front of him. The others all hate Dad, especially Klaus, but Ben knows he'll help. "I don't like it. It's hurting me, and I don't like killing people. I thought you could take it out." He's said all of that before, except the last part.

Dad stares at him for a moment, then picks up his pen again. "Go to your room, Number Six."

In the weeks after that, Ben stops being careful. On missions, he pays less and less attention to the bullets flying around him. The monster keeps him safe. Careful doesn't matter when you're a thing.

Between missions, he sneaks into Klaus's bedroom and curls up against him. Klaus likes to be the little spoon, but Ben is so afraid that something will burst out of him and he'll wake up with Klaus dead. That fear, which keeps gnawing at him, is what finally lifts the weight from his limbs. It's what makes him walk into their next mission with a straight back and clear vision.

They're in the city, right in the center of things, trying to stop two gangs from starting a fight on a bright, coldbring morning. They don't know the first thing about that, but it doesn't matter. Klaus is jittery next to Ben--definitely on something--but Ben can't make himself see anyone.

When he asks the monster to tear him apart, he feels all of it.

Afterward--and for some reason there is an afterward--Ben has no choice but to stay with Klaus. Klaus is the reason he's still here. He should feel angry about that, but everything's a little easier as a ghost.

He's also never worked harder. Klaus spirals harder and harder, and by the time Dad kicks him out, Ben is afraid he won't be able to keep Klaus alive. There's only so much he can do without putting his hands on him.

Tonight they're in the park, Klaus's favorite spot. Ben's least favorite. Klaus is several stints in rehab and a new set of pronouns down the road, and neither of them is thinking very much about home, except Klaus must be, because they've taken something and they won't tell Ben what. It's more than they should have taken, or there was something wrong with it.

"Just tell me what it was!" Ben says, although he won't be able to tell anybody.

"Who gives _even_ one fuck?" Klaus slurs, toppling onto the grass. It's dark out, and there's nobody around to see them fall.

"If you cared about me at all, which you claim to," Ben says, "You wouldn't do this."

Klaus looks at him with utter defiance. "Why? You claimed to care, and you still did it."

There isn't a lot that bothers Ben now, but that hits him so hard that he flickers and goes away for a second. When he gets his bearings, Klaus is lying on the grass, still.

So here is Ben, a ghost, and he's kneeling by Klaus's body in the park. He can't call 911, and they're not anywhere near a phone, anyway. All he can do is scream in Klaus's face for them to wake up. There's a tiny selfish part of him that wonders where he goes if Klaus dies.

A white-haired woman is walking her dog, and Ben shouts and shouts to her. She can't hear, but the dog must smell Klaus, because it tugs her close enough that she catches sight of them.

"Please," Ben says. "They're not just a drunk homeless person, they're--" An overdosed homeless person, but it doesn't matter, because she can't hear him.

She runs. It's not long before Ben hears sirens. He crouches by Klaus, waiting and holding Klaus's hand, which looks more like putting his hand through Klaus's.

When they revive Klaus in the ambulance, Ben isn't so sure they didn't die. It's not the first time they've had a close call like this. Ben can't be certain, though, and he doesn't want to say anything.

When they're at the hospital and they get a moment along, Klaus says, "Are you mad at me?"

Ben pushes his hood back. He feels tired to the bone, which ghosts shouldn't even be able to feel. "No," he says. "I'm just glad you're okay."

Klaus stays clean longer than usual next time. They even goes to rehab, and it's not until their next relapse that they and Ben hear about Dad.

"We don't have to go," Klaus says, already on the way there.

"I'm dead," Ben says. "How much worse could it get?" Mostly, though, he knows it will make Klaus happy to see their siblings. Ben tries to identify an emotion about Dad's death and can't.

**00.03 This is how we like to do it in the murder scene**

It would have been so easy, when Allison was four, or eight, or twelve, or sixteen, to say something like, "Hey Luther, I heard a rumor that you liked me." That would be a very normal thing to say. It would have been so easy for it to slip out, and for her to forget.

She doesn't only use her power to hurt people, although it makes sense that some people think that. It's just that those are the things they object to. But she's used it to make things better for every single one of her siblings.

_I heard a rumor that you let Vanya come with us to France._

_I heard a rumor that you don't stutter when you talk to girls._

_I heard a rumor that you extended Five's curfew._

_I heard a rumor that the monster doesn't keep you up all night._

_I heard a rumor that you wanted to do Luther's homework._

_I heard a rumor that you forgot how mad you were at Klaus._

And yes, she's used it shift the universe a little more in her favor. Maybe more than a little. But if it's about her and nobody else, isn't that fine?

She thinks Mom remembers. She thinks Dad knows, because while her rumors change how people remember the past, she doesn't think it changes the past itself, and Dad has a lot of recordings of her. If he were to look back even a day earlier, he'd know. He never says anything about it, though, so she isn't sure.

She's fourteen, and when she's alone in her room, she whispers about rumor that she's a girl. She doesn't think it will really work, but when it does, and when all of her siblings start calling her a girl, she can't look back.

They still call her Three until she hears a rumor that her name is Allison.

She's sick for two weeks after that, her body exhausted from stretching her power that much.

Now she's an adult. She knows what people say about girls like her, and she wants to explain that there must be a way to seperate who she is from what she does. Allison Hargreeves was never a lie. But she is a liar.

She's standing next to Luther, close enough to touch, but not touching. They're in their father's house, or maybe it's Luther's house now.

She's much more powerful now. And yes, maybe that's a problem. Being home with her siblings in the wake of Dad's death is surreal, but it's better than what she was dealing with at home. She keeps thinking that maybe all of her rumors will be found out or come crashingdown around her.

Diego looks _incredible_ , although she's not going to tell him that. She could have changed him the way she changed herself, but she didn't. Why is that? Is she just a horrible person? But they all learned survival before loyalty, except maybe Klaus.

Luther thinks he's loyal, and he is, to her. But only because he knows so little about her. If he knew what she did to Claire and Patrick, to lots of people over the years, would he still love her?

They're alone together. That keeps happening, and she keeps lettering it, although she knows that eventually something is going to slip or snap and she's going to find herself in his arms. There's so much less plausible deniability when you're an adult. They survived an assassination attempt, though, and it's making Allison brave and jittery and anxious. And honest.

"Sometimes I have this awful thought," Allison says.

Luther looks up from watching her hand on his chest. "What?"

"That a long time ago I could have heard a harmless little rumor and just forgotten. A rumor about us."

"Allison," he's saying, "you wouldn't do that." When she doesn't answer, he says, "If you did it, undo it. Undo it, and see what I feel about you." He can't even say it without looking away.

She takes a deep breath. She doesn't think this is possible. She doesn't want it, so it probably won't work.

"I heard a rumor," she says, and she can feel it start to happen. "I heard a rumor that you could see through all my rumors." She didn't have to do it like that, but it was a choice.

Luther blinks at her. The first thing she notices is that his arm is bleeding. She remembers a long-ago mission where she stitched it up with a rumor and hopes she hasn't accidentally killed him. He's staring at her, looking her up and down. She wonders what she sees. Allison doesn't know what she would look like as an adult without her rumor.

"Luther?" she says when she can't take it anymore.

"Well," Luther says slowly, "I don't think a rumor made me like you."

"And?" Allison asks, but her heart is pounding. _Luther, Luther, Luther._

"Look at me," Luther says. "Do you really want me to call you a liar?"

Allison comes close enough and slides her hand inside his shirt. She can feel his coarse, hairy chest. She wants him so badly that she feels as if her fingertips are electric.

"Change back," Luther says gently. "I don't--I want you to feel comfortable." She can feel him start to pull back, and she thinks he's more worried about what his body will do to her than what hers will do to him. She's tired of this gap, this power differential. The idea of closing it, balancing it is terrifying, but she trusted Luther with everything and he's given her everything in return.

"I heard a rumor that I've always been a girl to you," she says, deliberately wording it so he won't remember that she was ever anything else. That's the trouble with giving him everything. It's so easy to take back.

When she holds her, she tells herself she'll give it all back to him again when they're safe again.

**00.07 The kids don't care if you're all right, honey**

Vanya used to feel a lot of things, she's sure of that. It's not just the medication making her feel flat, because she's been on that since she was a toddler. It's just life. She remembers anger, and raging tears, and feeling so much that she wanted to be sick or dig her nails into her arms until she drew blood. But it's just a memory, and now she just has her violin, and any other music she can get her hands on.

Allison is weird with her. She 

They're lying on Vanya's bed once, because Allison has snuck out of training, pretending to be sick. Instead, they're reading magazines together, something that was Allison's idea.

"So," Allison says, in what Vanya has come to think of as her calculating tone, "who do you think is cute?"

Vanya feels a surge of panic which quickly ebbs to a dull ache. She points at a random boy with spiky hair in her magazine. "He's okay."

Allison waves her perfectly-manicured hand. Dad is going to tell her to take that off, Vanya thinks. Unless she rumors him. "Okay, sure, but I mean _real_ boys."

This is not the first time Allison has tried to have a conversation with her about "normal girl things." Vanya can never tell if she's faking it or not. "We don't really know any boys."

"We know some," Allison says meaningfully.

Vanya knows how Allison feels about Luther. She thinks probably every one they've ever met knows how Allison feels about Luther. She has a moment where she wants to say something really mean, like that they're siblings and it's gross.

"Nobody who's my type," she says instead.

Allison sighs and starts to stack her magazines.

Allison's mint green manicure is cute. Her lipstick--Dad will _definitely_ make her take that off--is cute. The way she's doing her hair lately is cute. But Vanya can't say any of that. It gets stuck in her throat and makes her feel very tired.

That's as far as it ever goes. She watches Allison and Allison watches Luther and Ben and Diego and Klaus do some kind of eye-strain-including multiple watching. Nobody watches her.

She's not as interesting as the others. She knows that. But maybe there's a way to be interesting by proxy.

The things she puts in the book--they're terrible. She knows it, even as she's writing it. She writes the truth about what happened to Ben. She writes about Klaus and Five (too much gender, not enough). She writes about Diego and what an angry girl he was. She writes about hearing Luther and Allison together, doing--maybe nothing, but maybe not.

She used to trade outfits with Klaus, and so she goes easier on him in her book. But he ignored her too, in favor of their more exciting siblings.

She waits and waits for one of the others to call her, after the book is published. Nobody does. Maybe they don't know where she's living, but she's not that hard to find.

Once she's out there in the world, having moderate but not staggering success, she realizes she could date. She goes to a couple of meet-ups and leaves before anyone can talk to her. Would it be crazy to have dinner with a nice girl? But she seems to be invisible to everyone she meets. It's not fair, but it's life. She can't understand why Dad didn't just send her back to Russia when he realized she was useless.

The others act like they had it so bad, and okay, they did, but isn't this worse? The problem comes from trying to compare, she thinks. Years pass, and she wishes they'd call, even to yell at her. She goes to all of Allison's films and looks for hints about how Allison is living her life. Klaus leaves her a message once, but when she returns it, the number has been disconnected.

Now Dad is dead, and they're all home again and angry at her, which they have a right to be. What she did was wrong. But she didn't know what else to do. She thought they were all escaping, in their own ways, and she had to do what was right for herself. She learned that in therapy, although she's not sure her therapist understood exactly what their family's situation was. If she hurt people along the way, she didn't hurt them much. Why are they all so afraid of the truth?

Vanya keeps the things that are true about herself very close. Nobody's ever wanted to know what's going on inside her, so she doesn't share. Allison never asked if Vanya liked girls, so she never told. Diego never wanted to talk to Vanya about being angry, so nobody knows how angry she is.

And she is. Now that she's an adult who's been to therapy, she understands that she's angry, although it doesn't always feel like that. But she always remembers anger as something shameful and dangerous. The last time she spoke to Dad before he died, he reminded her of that.

The worst part of being back at the mansion is being around Allison. That's also the best part, which is why it's so hard. But now Allison is following her around and acting like she wants to be friends, so who knows? Vanya isn't sure what her expectations are supposed to be. They've been so low for so long, and it seems almost self-injurious to hold any kind of hope that her siblings want to be a real family.

And Five is back. There's that. Vanya's best friend in the world, only now he's just like _Dad_ , of all things. He's dismissive and condescending and she's so angry she can barely breathe. But she takes her medicine like a good girl and reminds herself to be ashamed of feeling that. Let Diego be angry. Like Klaus and Diego be queer. Vanya will just be blank and quiet until something comes along to change that.

**00.01 I gave you blood, blood gallons of the stuff**

"What has Number Two been hiding in her room?"

Luther, thirteen and stubborn and stupid, tells Dad all about the binder, and then about the hormones Klaus tried to smuggle to Isadora. There's a huge fight, and when Dora comes to the others, eyes puffy from crying, she knows exactly whose fault it was.

Luther hadn't meant to say it. He could see how Dora would react, and he could see how Dad would react, and it came out anyway.

Luther learns to call Number Two Diego. He learns not to say anything about Klaus's outfits. He learns to put up with Ben and Vanya's moods. But he can forget all of that in a second if Dad asks him to. He can't imagine what would happen if he didn't. And he never has to.

He never makes an enemy of Allison. It's partly because no one, not even Dad, can stand up to her when she wants to get her way. She's too powerful and too stubborn. But most of all, Luther wants to take care of her. He knows she doesn't need it, the same way he knows that Diego does need it, but he can't make his impulses line up with reality.

It shouldn't surprise him, really, when they all leave. He knows he's as much to blame for that as Dad is, and now he's stuck in this house alone. Dad says jump, he asks how high. He can feel the weight of the house settling down on his shoulders, impossibly heavy. That's okay. He's strong.

Dad asks him for blood samples for experiments, he gives them. Dad asks him to go out alone, and he does it, again and again and again. Even after the mission that changes everything, he keeps on doing it. He doesn't have any other options.

The house becomes steadily more suffocating. It's hard to tell one day from the next, and he goes to bed every night wishing Allison were here. It seems wrong to think about her, like he should have her permission, but sometimes he can't help himself.

He always feels sick with shame afterward. He is a monster and she deserves better. He even misses Diego. He lets himself think about Diego sometimes, at night, and that seems much worse.

He just wants them all to come home.

Now that they are home, he's rethinking that.

But Allison is still amazing, not perfect, but still his best friend. Things are awkward between them, but it's not her fault. She has a real life now, or she did. Luther keeps picking away at that and not understanding what she gives back. Luther's her brother, or he's something else. Allison calls him Claire's uncle and then puts her hand on his chest. He burns with shame, both for wanting her and for being something nobody could want back.

Klaus is the easiest to be around, surprisingly. Luther doesn't have to respect him, so it's easy to talk to him. And he's the only one besides Allison who touches Luther.

"So!" Klaus leans into Luther's space, pupils huge. "What flavor of queer are _you_ these days?"

"What?" Luther asks, thrown.

"You know," Klaus says, wiggling his fingers. "I think that's our real power. We're all the, you know, the _gays_ and whatnot." He dissolves into giggles, holding his face.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Luther says stiffly. Never mind, Klaus is terrible to hang out with.

"Seriously, though, are you still pining for Allison?" Klaus demands."I know all about pining." He shoots a quelling look at the china cabinet. "Well, I _do_."

Luther hates being obvious, and he always is. "Don't be disgusting, Klaus," he says. "You're always disgusting."

After they find out about him, it's worse.

"You're a monster."

Luther wants to punch Diego unconscious, but it's not like he's wrong. Why else would Luther hide under so many layers and flinch when somebody touches him? Why else would he lie to everyone about what happened. Why would he shower in the dark and try to make his monstrous body as small as humanly possible?

Luther and Diego have always understood each other, unfortunately.

"You want to try me again?" Luther demands. "Don't worry, Two, I remember how you hit like a girl."

With a growl, Diego launches himself at Luther. He doesn't hit like a girl after all.

Luther can't punch back as hard as he wants without killing Diego, so he just slams him up against the wall. He's never been great with words, so he doesn't know how to say, _It's not far that you can talk about my body and I can't talk about yours. It's not fair that Dad hurt me just as much as you but I didn't run away and I was too stupid to realize it and I--_

He realizes he's breathing hard, holding Diego by the throat. Diego has a knife to Luther's chest.

Luther lets go. "I just," he says.

Diego opens his mouth to say something and then really looks at Luther. "What?" he says. It comes out sounding defensive. Luther thinks that means he feels bad.

"I just wanted to be a family," Luther says.

"You lost your shot at that a long time ago," Diego says, pushing himself off the wall."You picked Dad over us, not just once, but every fucking time."

"Well, Dad's gone," Luther says roughly. "So maybe give me a chance to get it right."

"Right," Diego says. "Without any mistakes to make, maybe you won't make them."

Luther knows none of them trust him. He hasn't exactly given them a reason. But if nothing else, he understands now why they're upset at Dad. "I just don't want to fight," he says.

Inexplicably, Diego puts his knife away. "Whatever. Let's go get a doughnut or something."

Luther doesn't think he's getting of the hook that easily, but as long as all of them are alive, he might still have a chance at being a good leader or a good brother.

**00.05 As soon as I get my gun**

Five sometimes wonders if Mom resents the fact that he's never let her name him. But she's not his mother and he already has a name. Because he's not going to let "Five" just be a rank. Three is the only other one who refused a name, although he's not sure it's for the same reasons.

When they're all twelve, some of the others start to become...complicated. Isadora throws all her knives into the dining room wall when she has to buy her first bra. Three is using his power so often that Five can't even have a conversation with him without feeling like they've been through it twice. Klaus starts bringing drugs into the house. Ben retreats so far within himself that he sometimes goes days without talking. Even Vanya, his one confidant, becomes withdrawn and moody. They're all too much.

Luther is the most bearable, but his slavish devotion to Dad is baffling.

Nobody is worse than Klaus, though. He takes Vanya's skirts and finds make-up somewhere (Five suspects Three of sneaking it in) and parades around the house in heels. Five doesn't understand it and is vaguely nauseated by it. None of these are templates that Five can see himself fitting into.

"Why?" he asks Klaus, when they're thirteen. 

Klaus, who is hanging upside down off a chair, says, "Excuse?"

"Why do you do all--that?" Five asks, waving his hand at the general Klaus situation.

Klaus sighs deeply and pulls himself upright, curling into a tight ball in the chair. "What? Smoke weed? Steal stuff? Antagonize Dad? You do that one. You do that one a _lot_."

"Not that," Five says disturbed. He didn't know Klaus was stealing. "Never mind."

Five is so consumed with the battle of wits between himself and Dad and he puts everything else off for later, after, once that's all resolved.

Only it doesn't get resolved, and then he's alone in the apocalypse, and the only way he's learned to be is the way Dad is. He hopes he doesn't treat Delores the way Dad treated Mom, but he doesn't know how else relationships are supposed to look.

He spends longer than he should at the destroyed house. He keeps telling himself there might be someone out there alive, some corner of Battery City untouched, but he finds himself back at the house over and over again. His siblings as adults are almost unrecognizable. He can't find Three, Ben or Vanya at all. There is something wrong with Luther, beyond being dead, but Five can't stand to touch him to find out more. Dora is...different. The beard is different. But it's not a surprise, somehow.

Klaus is the only one who is recognizably Klaus, and so Five can't leave. He keeps thinking that Klaus will sit up again, and then call the others back as ghosts.

After that continues not to happen, Five moves on.

He thinks, when the Handler finds him, that maybe he'll have a chance to learn about the world after all, but he's missed all that somehow. He only knows how to live outside everything. He's good with the gun. Very good. He doesn't have to learn how to be a partner for a brother or a man or a woman or anything normal people have to learn how to be. He's a trigger finger and that's all.

For a long time, that feels like a good thing. But he keeps going through the steps to get home. He has a responsibility to his family. With his help, they'll all end up okay.

And then: These kids are fucked. That's what keeps running through Five's head, in 2019. He can remember being thirty. When he was thirty, he was trying to find clean water to drink. He was drunk and screaming at Dolores. He was huddled in the remains of this house.

If possible, his siblings are even more messed up than that. He doesn't think the others know just how important it is that they become a family again.

Five quickly learns that Dora's name is Diego now, and that Diego is doing exactly as well as Five always thought he would. Luther is doing exactly as badly.

Number Three has come a long way. Five doesn't understand who she is at first, but it's not hard to do the math when he remembers the beautiful dead woman from the apocalypse, after Diego makes a snide remark to her about rumors.

Klaus, however, hasn't changed at all. He's still high and wearing makeup and skirts and making jokes that aren't really jokes.

And Vanya. Vanya, who exposed all of them to help herself hide. Five remembers her better than the others, perhaps, because he was paying attention. She was never a victim. She was always quietly vicious in her own way. She was better at it than most of their siblings.

The idea that he's starting over, that he could get another change at growing up right, is overwhelming. He doesn't know what right looks like, and he only has his siblings as models. Luther is no model, because he's not grown up.

Five doesn't want to be any of them. But he's got to start again. All he knows how to do is take people apart and not feel too much about it. He needs to find something else to be.

He catches Klaus alone in the house and says, "You're still very much… _you_ , I see."

Klaus raises his eyebrows and laughs, high and grating. "Well, yeah. Disappointed?"

"No," Five says, needled. They already seem to want him to be a proxy for Dad. He knows he doesn't want to be that. "How did you...know?" How did Klaus know what to grow up into, he means, but he isn't sure how to articulate it. He already grew up once, into nothing. He doesn't want to make that mistake again.

"Oh, Five," Klaus says. "You and I are going to have some really great conversations."


End file.
